17. Patrick’s Paschal Table

[See Dr. B. MacCarthy’s Introduction to the Annals of Ulster, vol. iv.]

The Paschal table drawn up by Dionysius (based on a cycle of 19 years like the Alexandrine) superseded the Paschal canon of Victorius of Aquitaine about 525 A.D. in the Roman Church. The canon of Victorius (based on a cycle of 532 years) had been introduced in 457 A.D. and continued to be used in Gaul to the end of the eighth century. Before the reception of the Victorian system, the date of Easter was calculated in the west by a cycle of 84 years. In the time of St. Patrick, the terms between which Easter could fluctuate, according to the supputatio Romana based on this cycle, were the 16th and 22nd of the lunar month, the 22nd March and 21st April of the calendar. These terms were due to modifications (which had been introduced in 312 and 343 A.D.) of an older computation, in which the lunar limits were the 14th and 20th of the lunar month, the calendar limits the 25th March and 21st April.[420]

There were thus four stages, from the end of the third century, in the Paschal computation adopted at Rome:

The Celtic Church in Britain and Ireland never adopted the Victorian cycle, and the great question of the seventh-century controversies was whether they should adopt the Dionysian computation, and abandon their old system which was based on a cycle of 84. There is no doubt that a cycle of 84 was used in Ireland in the 6th and 7th centuries, for we have the clear and express testimony of one of the great Irish churchmen of the sixth century, Columbanus of Bobbio and Luxeuil. In a letter addressed to a Gallic synod 603 or 604 A.D., he writes: plus credo traditioni patriae meae, iuxta doctrinam et calculum octoginta quatuor annorum.[421] The confirmation supplied by Bede, H.E., 2, 2 and 5, 21, as well as by Aldhelm (ed. Dümmler, M.G.H., Epp. Mer. et Kar. Aeui, i. 233), is superfluous.

But what surprises us is that this Paschal reckoning which prevailed in Ireland in the sixth and seventh centuries was not the supputatio Romana of the fourth and fifth centuries. The Paschal limits were different. The Irish celebrated Easter from the 14th to the 20th of the moon, and not before 25th March.[422] In other words, their system represented the oldest of the four stages noted above. How is the survival of this system to be explained?

If we suppose that a table of Paschal computation was brought by Patrick to Ireland in the first half of the fifth century, it is not probable that he would have introduced any other than the supputatio Romana. This inference does not depend on the view which we adopt as to Patrick’s relations to the Church of Rome. It depends upon his connexion with the Gallic Church. There is no evidence, so far as I can discover,[423] that the Gallic Church did not agree with the Roman in the fourth and fifth centuries as to the Paschal limits. We should have to suppose that Patrick rejected both the system prevailing in western Europe, and the Alexandrine system, in favour of the older usage prevailing in his native country, Britain; and this, in view of the circumstances of his career, seems extremely unlikely.[424]

The evidence, in my opinion, suggests rather a different conclusion. It suggests that the Paschal system which prevailed in Britain in the fourth century and survived to the seventh had been introduced from Britain into Ireland, and taken root among the Christian communities there, before the arrival of Patrick. This is what we should expect. It is in accordance with the hypothesis of the British origin of pre-Patrician Christianity in Ireland. It is easy to comprehend that Patrick, though accustomed to the supputatio Romana, acquiesced in the continuance of the other system or was unable to change it. It would be not at all easy to comprehend that, if he had found Ireland a tabula rasa ready to receive any Paschal calculation that he might choose to inscribe, he should not have introduced the system generally received in the Western Church unless it were the system generally received in the Eastern Church. The Paschal evidence appears to be another proof of pre-Patrician Christianity in Ireland.